Russians demonstrate year after opposition leader's murder

Russians participate with flowers and portraits in a memorial march for Boris Nemtsov to mark the first anniversary of his murder in Mocow on Feb. 27, 2016.(Photo: Yuri Kochetkov, epa)

MOSCOW — Thousands marched here Saturday to commemorate the first anniversary of the assassination of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, and demonstrate against a worsening political and economic climate under President Vladimir Putin.

Authorities allowed the peaceful rally to proceed even as many expressed bleak prospects for the future.

“It’s gotten worse in a year,” said Ilya Yashin, deputy chairman of the PARNAS liberal opposition party and a colleague of Nemtsov. “There was some hope a year ago that the murder would at least serve as a catalyst for real dialogue between the people and the government but that has not happened.”

Over 24,000 people turned up for the march, local media outlet RBC reported. Police estimates were significantly lower at 7,500. Moscow authorities blocked access Saturday evening to Nemtsov supporters wishing to pay respects at the place where he was shot on Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge. Earlier in the day, U.S. Ambassador John Tefft laid flowers at the spot.

Nemtsov, a one-time deputy prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin, was gunned down one year ago on the bridge just steps from the Kremlin. Five suspects – all Chechens – were arrested soon after, but a man whom Nemtsov’s supporters believe organized the attack, Ruslan Geremeyev, was not charged. Geremeyev, as well as the five suspects, have connections to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

According to a recent poll by the independent Levada Center, 52% of Russians believe the organizers of the attack will never be found.

“I have no doubt that Kadyrov is connected to the murder,” said Yashin, who last week presented a report accusing him of posing a national security threat. “Investigators had neither the influence nor the political will to bring the organizers to justice."

In the year since Nemtsov's murder, Russians witnessed their economy plummet further and the political climate grow more repressive.

Russia’s ruble lost even more of its value in 2015 on the back of low oil prices and an economic sector crippled by Western sanctions. It currently hovers around 76 to the dollar.

The combined woes leave many young Russians feeling isolated.

“This is terrible for me,” said Anastasia Okhramovich, a political science major at a Moscow university. “In the 21st century, we should have dialogue with the rest of the world, and this is important for us as young people. But part of the world is closed to us. And I don’t have money to travel.”

A creeping crackdown on dissent continues, with the number of prosecuted crimes against the state tripling since 2014, while a law labeling NGOs with foreign funding as “foreign agents” caused some 33% to shut down, according to news reports.

Russia’s Kremlin is “concerned about the possibility of protests,” said Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security and professor at the Global Affairs Center at New York University. “We’ve seen repressions against the liberal opposition, now they may be preparing the groundwork for the next generation of potential opposition, whether labor protests or something else.”

Putin recently warned his security agency, the FSB, that “enemies from abroad” were preparing to undermine the upcoming parliamentary elections. He added authorities uncovered over 400 foreign spies in Russia in 2015, Interfax reported.

Political activists are often harassed and threatened. Vyacheslav Kislitsin, an organizer of a march in Nemtsov’s honor more than 1,000 miles east of Moscow in the town of Chelyabinsk, was attacked by unidentified assailants, according to the Dozhd television station.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has publicly called for the prosecution of Kremlin critics as “traitors,” and even posted an Instagram photo of former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov as a sniper’s target, with the cryptic inscription “Whoever hasn’t understood will understand.”

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Demonstrators carry portraits of slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and a big poster as they march marking the first anniversary of his killing, in Moscow on Feb. 27, 2016. Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister in the government of Boris Yeltsin, was gunned down shortly before midnight on Feb. 27, 2015, while walking across a bridge a short distance from the Kremlin with his Ukrainian model-girlfriend.
Kirill Kudryavtsev, AFP/Getty Images

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At the Nemtsov march in Moscow, some complained they felt like the walls were closing in. “We don’t have political friends, just enemies. We are a country at war,” said Alexander Kamensky, a retired lawyer with a poster that said “I am not afraid.”

Speaking over apple pie at a restaurant called Beverly Hills Diner, another demonstrator, lawyer Maxim Titarenko, spoke of a “growing chasm between the people and the government.”

“Worst thing is,” he said, “is that for people who don’t like the way things are, the only option is to leave.”